On a rainy October afternoon, after his 20th season as a professional cricketer, Chris Woakes sits down at Edgbaston’s indoor nets and thinks of the advice that helped him when he was 17 and about to start a career in this consuming sport. Woakes has just won his third County Championship with Warwickshire and he played 62 Tests for England, taking 192 wickets and scoring 2,034 runs. He also won two World Cups and experienced a range of England coaches, from Andy Flower to Brendon McCullum, and played for captains as different as Sir Alastair Cook, Eoin Morgan, Joe Root and Ben Stokes.
Woakes has been a positive and steadying presence in a tumultuous time for English cricket. I quickly learned that what I had, and the way I did it, was the way forward. I’m relatively reserved, but I had quite a bit of dog in me which I didn’t show verbally.
You need that burning fire.” Woakes is routinely described as the nicest man in cricket, but it’s a reductive view that obscures the skill and tenacity that defines him. The book opens with his ending in Test cricket, on the bizarre morning last August when Woakes came in at No 11, with his damaged left arm in a sling, to try to help England score the 17 runs that would secure a 3-1 series victory over India. There was a fitting symmetry as Woakes walked down the stairs at the Oval, where he had made his Test debut 12 years earlier, while typically putting the interests of the team first.
Woakes had dislocated his shoulder while fielding and could hold the bat only with one hand. The pain became excruciating when he tried to run and he knew India’s bowlers would show no mercy at the climax of a riveting series. But it was a horrible moment as well.
I had the agony of the shoulder, but there’s no worse feeling, especially as a bowler, when you leave the team handicapped: 10 v 11. Not many teams win from that position. That hurts.” How did he feel as he stepped on to the field?
I was going to bat with one arm, which was never going to look pretty or be great. One of the things you have to get over is the thought that, when someone’s bowling at 90mph with a hard cricket ball, it can hurt even when you’re batting the right way round. It was a challenge to build up the courage to face that.” Was he scared?
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